A Note from the Editors

Sometime last year, right before we began planning our spring 2010 issue, Arnold Rachman's paper, “The Origins of a Relational Perspective in the Ideas of Sándor Ferenczi and the Budapest School of Psychoanalysis,” arrived on our desk. Rachman had us hooked within the first few pages of this intelligent and lucid piece. In this paper he describes Ferenczi's theoretical and clinical work regarding countertransference, the notion of a two-person psychology, mutuality, and, at the time, other radical ways of thinking as a predictor of object relations theory and, especially, the relational school that would emerge some 50 years after his death. Even more importantly, his paper also reminded us how crucial Ferenczi was to psychoanalysis in general. This started us thinking. What would happen, we wondered, if we published a whole issue devoted to Ferenczi—if we invited psychoanalysts from all over the world to share their thoughts about the once maligned heir apparent to Freud and his work? The outcome of our efforts is what you have in your hands today. Once we put the call out, manuscripts began to pour in. We received papers from well-known analysts, Ferenczi scholars, and those who are newer to writing about psychoanalysis, all of whom have been directly influenced by Ferenczi and his thinking.

In addition to the paper by Rachman that inspired this special issue, we are running the first chapter of Lewis Aron and Adrienne Harris's book. The Legacy of Sándor Ferenczi , as well as a new, updated introduction to the book written for Psychoanalytic Perspectives. Many believe that along with the English translation of Ferenczi's Clinical Diaries , this was the book that helped to ignite renewed interest and excitement about Ferenczi's work, welcoming him back from his more than 50-year exile. This seminal book has been out of print for 17 years, and it was in part our interest in publishing this chapter and new introduction that launched its recent republication